"Life Line II" for Thach Ha District Hospital in Vietnam

Dec 2012

Vietnam

14191 people reached

Although the Vietnamese government has
invested considerable resources in
improving water and sanitation over the
last decade and has made considerable
progress in meeting the UN Millennium
Development Goals, there are many
challenges left which still need support
from outside bodies.

When Singapore based NGO Lien Aid first
visited the Thach Ha District Hospital, they
found the water and sanitation facilities to
be in very poor condition. With financial
and logistics support from Borouge and
their local agent Han Huy Trading, they
constructed a new water treatment plant
and transported contaminated wastewater
from the hospital building to a new
wastewater treatment facility. The hospital’s
toilet facilities were also improved and
hand-washing awareness raising
campaigns carried out greatly improving
the wellbeing of both patients and staff.

Vietnam has been growing fast over the last
decade and has made considerable progress
in meeting the Millennium Development Goals
on water and sanitation, however there are many
challenges left which can still benefit from
support from external organisations.

Lien Aid is a Singapore based NGO working in
Asia to bring safe water and sanitation to poor
communities. In this, their third collaborative
project with Borouge, they have significantly
improved the water and sanitation conditions for
the patients and staff at the Thach Ha District
Hospital in Vietnam.

As we all know clean water and good sanitation
are essential for the health and wellbeing of us
all and never more so than when we are in
hospital recovering from an operation or illness.

The Thach Ha District Hospital

The Thach Ha District Hospital serves the local
community in one of the poorest provinces in
Vietnam. Located 340 km to the south of the
city of Hanoi the hospital was in very poor
condition with a poor quality water supply,
inadequate hand-washing facilities and untreated
wastewater on the site. These conditions not
only affected the wellbeing of the patients in the
hospital but also threatened the health of the
people living nearby. On discovering this situation
Singapore based NGO Lien Aid drew up an
action plan which they called “Life Line II”
(following on from the very successful “Life Line I”
project at the Hanoi Children’s Hospital) and
invited Borouge to support them within their
Water for the World programme.

Working together to improve the wellbeing of both patients and staff

The agreement between Lien Aid and Borouge
was signed in November 2009 and the “Life Line
II” project was commenced with the ambitious
objectives of:

Providing the 124,000 patients and healthcare workers with the access to free drinkingwater 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Providing improved water quality for medicalprocedures, hand-washing and personalhygiene for the 14,000 in-patients.

Constructing a new wastewater treatmentsystem to reduce the health risk and improvethe environment for the 3,000 people livingaround the hospital.

Improving the toilet facilities and conductinghygiene campaigns to encourage medicalstaff and patients to wash their hands anddispose of solid waste properly

Borouge provided the BorSafe™ HE3490-LS
PE100 compound for the project and with the
help of their local agent Han Huy Trading ensured
that only high quality pipes were available when
required by the Lien Aid team. Quality pipe
manufacturer Tifoplas based in Ho Chi Minh City
produced all the PE100 pipes and delivered them
to the hospital site.

These pipes have been used to deliver water
from the nearby river to the newly constructed
water treatment plant at the hospital facility and
also to drain the wastewater from the hospital
building to the new wastewater treatment facility.
All the construction work has now been
completed and the Lien Aid team are preparing
to train the hospital maintenance staff in the
operation of the various elements and officially
hand over the project to the hospital management.
As planned the hospital’s toilet facilities have
also been improved and hand-washing
awareness raising campaigns carried out for
both staff and patients.

A better future for all

All these tremendous improvements in the
hospital facilities and the knowledge of the staff
will undoubtedly improve the quality of the
medical treatment for the patients in the hospital
and the wellbeing of the community working and
living close by.